Rien --
Yes, realists do start out as optimists. (as babies, who don't know anything, don't have a clue, and with realistic parents to take care of them). Reality teaches and encourages them to quickly outgrow that. Some never do. And many of those do not survive.
Realists start companies all of the time, usually after adequate reality checks, and realistic appraisals of the odds of success, realistic estimates of the effort required and with a realistic margin of safety figured in.
Your often heard quote, sounds to me like a bunch of optimists who have been kicked in the teeth by reality. They often makeup a very good candidate pool of new future realists.
Hey, hang on to your optimism if it works for you, please just don't put it into your programming code.ggg Actually, I think your a realist, who just mistakenly mislabels himself as an optimist. I've known very few, if any, optimistic computer programmers. :-) Mac owners may be an exception though.ggg There is hope. ggg
Luck. Reality says sometimes you have it and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Realistically, the house almost always gets it's cut. Sometimes luck is seeing a chance and not taking it. What if you take the optimistic chance and something really bad comes out of it. Happens all of the time. Realism would have tried to protect you. Why do you think the realistic owner's of the Las Vegas casinos are so wealthy? They will happily welcome all of the optimists, that you can provide.
Later,
Robo
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